Notes from inside the industry.

Two acronyms decide who wins online now. Most websites only know one of them.

Builder.ai raised over $450M as an AI company. The AI was 700 engineers in India.

We design warehouses for people who walk or drive a fork lift. Amazon stopped doing that years ago.

Cuts will happen, but don’t cut too deep.

Most companies say they're not ready for AI. They're skipping the only step that matters.

Yesterday, I posted about what NotebookLM did with the Stepan brochure. Here's taking it one step further.

I dropped Stepan's surfactant selector guide into NotebookLM.

Big Tech is running several times the EBITDA of Big Chemical.

It's really stressful being clay.

Your P&L looks normal. You feel EBITDA is too low. You're probably right.

Dow Chemical cut 4,500 jobs and replaced them with AI. That cut might be too deep.

Your chatbot is one bad answer from a lawsuit. An airline learned that the hard way.

An AI-powered police report tool in Heber City, Utah, drafted an official report saying an officer transformed into a frog.

Here's the old site vs. the new site.

Claude rebuilt my website this weekend. Not a wireframe or a draft. The actual site, copy and code.

Nine Claude agents. One research task. Eight researched. One verified the rest.

One down, nine to go.

It took me a long time to see this clearly. Your best supplier is usually your worst margin.

74 years ago today, my dad arrived in the United States, as a little boy with his family, from Sicily.

The average chemical distribution sales rep manages hundreds of products across 10 chemistries and 3 dozen customers.

Distributor margins are up. The operational problems underneath them are still there.

Your next sales rep is already in your building, wearing safety glasses.

Chemical distribution has the lowest AI exposure of any sector at 14%.

Claude wins on writing. But, the tool most people use is ChatGPT.

In one week, Anthropic (Claude) raised more money than most chemical distributors make in a lifetime: $65 billion.

A lot of people in this industry are quietly nervous about AI. I get it. The concern is understandable.

AI is not your next project. Organizing your data is.

Most of your reps wing their sales calls. It is not laziness. It is math.

Ask any executive where their day goes. The honest answer is usually email. Not meetings. Not strategy. Email.  

Sadara in Jubail is still offline. No restart date. 3 million tons of annual plastic and chemical supply, off the market.

ACD members: You voted. Regulation is our number one fight.

Going to the American Coatings Show? Take a look at the exhibitor list on their website. It's nearly 450 exhibitors listed across 180 pages.

Meta cut 8,000 jobs this week to fund AI. Microsoft ran its first employee buyout EVER. Same reason.

Your surfactant line has 75 SKU's. Your sales team can explain maybe 5.

Your freight invoices have errors. You do not have time to find them.

$127 billion in tariff refunds are up for grabs. Most of it will go unclaimed.

Your keyboard is costing you an hour a day. You just never added up the minutes.

Ask anyone what a barrel of oil makes. They'll say gasoline. That is maybe half the story.  

Six hours to process 47 SDS files. The same job now takes four minutes.

Tariffs are not a supply chain problem. They are a data problem wearing a supply chain costume.

Companies use less than five percent of the data they collect. For chemical distributors, I would bet that number is even lower.

Who's leading who?

In a recent interview, Matthew McConaughey talks about how this book changed his life.

Last week’s trip to Utah wasn't just about the beautiful views—it was about the future of our industry.

Some ROI's are infinite.

We usually think leadership is about controlling everything, but the real trick is actually just rolling with the punches instead of fighting them. 🧘

As the holidays are upon us, let's keep perspective of what is important.

Keep grinding.

Peace of mind > Maximizing ROI (Payoff mortgage or not?)

There are two wolves within us.

In a world of ADHD, anxiety and other mental health challenges, Abigail Shrier's 𝘉𝘢𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘺 is a must read.

Stop giving unsolicited advice. It's one of the fastest ways to shut down a conversation.

When I heard Tony Dungy was the keynote speaker for the Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD)'s Annual Meeting, I knew I had to be there.

Why we built Real Data Solutions

A short note on what this practice is, who it's for, and why we only work with chemical distributors.

I had the pleasure of talking to the Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD)'s #EmergingLeaders class about leadership.

I am honored to have been named a 2024 ACD Expert of the Year for Education!